


desk job

by currentlycrying



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Kylo Ren - Freeform, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-TFA, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, and eventually post-tfa, reader has a desk job, reader is a female, reader is also always stressed, reader is anxious, she works at a desk- this is not a modern day au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/currentlycrying/pseuds/currentlycrying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your job at the Finalizer took you away from the battle field and stuck you in an office.  Even you could be an anxious mess at times, your job allowed you stability and saftey in a hectic environment. That was, until Kylo Ren sauntered into your life.</p><p> Hearing about his wrath was one thing, but witnessing it first hand was another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	desk job

**Author's Note:**

> !!!!!hi!!!!  
>  it's been a very long time since i sat down and wrote something for ao3!!!! and atm i'm kinda on a kylo ren high so here's my attempt at a fic! im hoping i can commit and continue this,, (also im sorry for any mistakes!!!!)

Your office was small. You were lucky enough to be blessed with one to call your own. You could’ve been stationed in a room with other officers and lieutenants, wasting away while working away in a hot, sweaty, and altogether, an uncomfortable environment. But, with your absurd luck, you were stationed in your own small office. It was big enough for your desk, the swivel chair, one obnoxious monitor positioned on your desk, and another chair right by the door.

Your superiors often questioned your tactics of handling work, and in the past had asked you politely to work digitally-but you preferred paper. It did make a mess, considering all of the information you surrounded yourself with, but working with paper made more sense to you. The only downside you saw to this technique were the papers that were scattered all around the room: on the floor, on your desk, pinned to the wall, and under your chair and desk. But- you took pride in highlighting, circling, and writing notes in the margins. You enjoyed flipping through papers and jotting things down in your notebooks. And you also enjoyed the filing cabinets with your personal belongings because your bunk was cramped. In the place of papers and folders, you had spare clothes and your toothbrush and toothpaste. This tactic came in handy when you pulled all nighters (sometimes all weekers.) You knew that you should the cabinets for their intended their purpose, but you were unorganized and knew where everything was. While you did type up all of your reports (due to your less than perfect handwriting,) you still found yourself getting random papercuts. You worked fast, and took pride in the fact that your superiors could not replace you even if they tried.

Your job was to research ways to improve the Stormtrooper's suits to be functional in different environments. You were also in charge of making sure they were safe and built to last before they were mass-produced. You were an expert in different materials and how they reacted to different climates on different planets. While you did not design how they would look, you did choose the materials and approve the final designs. You were chosen for this coveted position due to your hard work at the academy you attended years ago. The academy was “a time” and that’s how you decided to leave it.

You were an overall calm person, but you were known to get ‘overly-emotional’ and ‘dramatic’ at times. Your anxiety could spike at any minute, and that’s one of the downsides of working with tangible, flimsy rectangles. An example of this, was when you were calmly reading a report given to you earlier that week. You glanced to the side, and noticed a stack of papers on the ground; messy and unorganized. It was little things like this that caused your hand to shake. Rather than get up and do a quick clean up of your office like a reasonable person, you ended up pushing all the papers off your desk and tearing up an old (or in some cases, one you were working on at that moment) file and proceeding to roughly run your hands through your hair. You took a deep breath and started to clean up. You hated this part of yourself but, you endured.

Today was different than other days, but you were ok with that. Unlike some of your co-workers, you welcomed and enjoyed change. You were excited because you were invited to watch the troopers in action. Not “in action”, but in the training arena wearing the prototype armor that you had approved of a few days ago. Although these were prototypes and probably going to have some kinks, you were enthusiastic about attending the demonstration. It was one of your favorite parts about your job.

Waking up, you rubbed your eyes and sat up, nearly avoiding hitting your head on the cot which laid above yours.

You shared a room with four other girls, and most mornings were complete chaos. Not only did you all sleep together in one room in bunkbeds, but you all shared a single refresher. Every morning, you woke up in the dark at 006 hours. Getting into the shared refresher before waking them up was hard and no matter how quiet you were, they awoke from the creak of the refresher door. They all seemed to grow up without knowing the common courtesy of not going in when someone else is showering.

Stepping into the shower, you made a mental note to ask one of them to borrow a hair tie. As you lathered your hair, one of them came in. You didn’t know who it was, but she knew it was you.

“I will never understand why you insist on taking cold showers,” she said, washing her hands in the sink.

“It’s not cold. It’s luke warm,” you retorted.

“(Y/N), you’re so confusing sometimes,” she huffed out, switching off the water.

“I’m not confusing. I just have ways that things are supposed to be done and if they’re not done that way, it stresses me out”, you answered shutting off the shower and reaching for your towel.

You eventually made your way to the cafeteria and waited in line for breakfast. It was a blue jell-o like substance. You absolutely hated it. It has a tasteless and textureless feel. But it did cause your hunger to subside. You took a seat next to the two of your bunkmates and some other girls you recognized from around the base. You quietly listened as they went back and forth about the latest gossip. While you claimed you “hated drama,” you were actually interested in it. This came in handy because one of your little known talents was your ability to blackmail. While some thought that it was unethical, you never used your power for bad. Infact, you never used it at all because people tended to stay away from your ‘bad side.’

Picking at your food, you finally settled on eating the small nutrition sticks that came with the ugly and pretentiously colored pudding. You nibbled on them for a few minutes until you ended up throwing out the rest. You decided to join in on the small talk, offering some small head nods and occasional “yeahs” to the conversation. Today’s topic: the control center. Out of all you, only two had been inside. You had not, and you had no plans of going there anytime soon. One girl bragged, her voice bubbly as her personality, about how she worked a few doors down from the infamous room. She went on to tell the story about “that one time” that the wall across from hers was slashed red with burning embers and how she came face-to-face with the infamous Kylo Ren… and he didn’t kill her.

“I’m telling you guys, he looked me straight in the eyes and then walked away. We had a connection that none of you will ever have,” she said, as all of the girls seated at your tabled snickered. “But none of you will understand I suppose.”

You didn’t understand why she was constantly bragging about her 15 second of fame. It was clear to you that Kylo Ren decided that killing her would’ve been a waste of time and left him with yet another dead body on his hands. Her dead body would be left lying there until a janitor or someone rolled her lifeless corpse into the trash compactor. You disguised your laugh as an exhale, thanking the stars that she couldn’t read your thoughts.

Rather than listen to her babble on about her story, you let your mind wonder. You thought about your job, and then you thought about other jobs that the base had to offer. There were a bunch and your job seemed some-what worthless in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes, you wished you were a medic. Your grandmother was a medic, or at least from what you had heard. While your office was small and one of the lights needed to be replaced, the medbay was cool and smelled clean. All of the rooms were white. The walls were white. The floors were a glossy white. The tools were silver and reflective. Everything matched the white motif (you wish your office was white rather than a dull gray.) The only downside of working in the medbay was the occasional screaming patient-suffering from battle wounds inflicted by the resistance. There was also the constant threat of bacteria and illnesses of foreign planets and galaxies. You weren't ready to commit to that.

When you finally realized you were caught up in your thoughts again, you looked down at your data pad- never more than an arm’s length away- and saw you were cutting it close. You were scheduled to be at the arena in fifteen minutes. You quickly waved goodbye to your pals and walked out.

                                                       x x x

You hated walking around the ship. You tapped your fingers on your leg as you walked down the halls, passing the occasional marching group of Stormtroopers and higher ranking officers. You subconsciously rolled up your uniform coat sleeves to your elbows. The temperature of the finalizer depended on where you were in the ship. The farther from the control center, the colder it got. Your office was a seven minute walk away from the center, which gave you a comfortable temperature. Your friends at the med bay always bragged about their “arctic chill”. You were partial to the cold, only because you could bundle up. You can always add layers, but removing them was tricky. Especially with the strict uniform policy and punishments that derived from those that violated them.

Keeping a steady pace, you found that you were on schedule. You weren’t confident enough in yourself to admit you were a little ahead, but the thought of it stuck to you. As you approached the doors leading to the control box above the arena, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. As you reached the doors, you looked down the hall. A deep scarlet color reflected off of the usually silver walls. You assumed that a door was open and the glow of a machine or something was reflecting into the hallway. You pressed your hand against the pad and the door sprung to life, opening with a loud hiss.

You were met with tense eyes, which relaxed once they saw it was you. You stepped in and stood in the doorway awkwardly.

“(L/N), correct,” one of the men inside of the control room asked. You recognized him after a second or two. His name was Mac and he had given you some advice on how to improve the suits a few weeks ago.

“Yeah, that’s me,” you said, offering a small smile.

“Great, you can take a seat behind her and we’ll begin shortly” He said motioning to a small, mousy girl with brown hair.

You noticed right away something in the room was missing, or felt off. A few moments later the doors sprung to life again, and a figure stepped into your peripheral vision.

You turned around and were greeted with a stern gaze. Two ice-cold green orbs were focused on you, scrutinizing every movement you made. You felt like the owner of these eyes knew everything you were doing -or were ever going to do- before you did it. He smoothed his hair back, a nervous tic you presumed.

“Prepare the troops.” the young owner of the eyes began, his voice strained and nasally. 

There was a pause and the door slid open, and in walked Phasma. She held herself like a goddess, and expected to be treated no less than. You aspired to be as looked up and feared as her.

Looking to your right, you noticed Hux was eyeing the door every few seconds. He strode to Phasma after a few moments, and began to speak in a hushed tone. But, his quiet voice was heavily contrasted with Phasma’s robotic voice. You reached inside of your pocket for your small notebook and scribbled down an idea for volume control on the trooper’s helmets. They went back and forth as the officers plucked away on their screens.

You tuned them everyone out and resumed writing in your notepad. Your notes inevitably became drawings. Crude doodles, mainly of you (who are we kidding- they were only of you.) You drew yourself standing, screaming, crying, bleeding, a wide array of emotions and actions on a small canvas. You were happily doodling until your pen ran out of ink. You sighed, and clicked it shut in hopes of saving what ink the pen had left for notes and stats from this demonstration.

You sighed and subconsciously jiggled your leg on the cross bar of the chair. Sadly, only your tips of your boots reached the floor. And for that reason, you started to stress out. Millions of thoughts flooded your mind and you tensed up, attempting to suppress them. This caused your leg to jiggle faster. It didn’t even make sense- why were you getting worked up because your boots couldn’t reach the floor. Why am I such a mess, you thought to yourself.

“We’ve waited long enough. Are the troops ready for a demonstration,” Phasma asked, looking toward Mac and away from Hux. 

“Yes, General,” Mac replied, staring down at his screen. He looked over at the girl in front of you and she gave a curt nod. You relaxed your leg and looked down at the arena.

With a stone cold glare, the girl in front of you input the code, releasing the storm troopers into the arena, separated into two teams.  
You watched as the voice counted down. The robotic voice bounced off the walls until the Stormtroopers began their assault on each other. Their guns emitted beams of light rather than deadly shots.

Their lasers hit each other mercilessly. It looked like a rave… Or at least, what you thought a rave looked like. You had a feeling that the crazy parties you had heard rumors about on distant planets looked similar to the scene unfolding in front of you. You longed to visit a planet. To see new moons and suns. To wear something else than your dreadful uniform. To feel the wind on your face. But, knew it was against protocol to leave without filling out the proper paperwork. The process was tedious and made it nearly impossible to leave base. But, unlike your colleagues, you had left base on numerous occasions, but you never stayed for more than a day. Investigating materials from planets recently put under the control of the first order was the most exciting part of your job. Sadly, you never had the chance to see the more exciting parts of the planets (ie- the shops, the buildings.. Even the people or other creatures of the said planet.) Most of your vacation time was spent in your bunk messing around on your datapad, doodling, reading, watching trashy shows and movies from distant planets and galaxies, and sleeping.

The hushed voices of Hux and Phasma distracted you from taking notes, but not enough to make you mess up. That was until you heard a sharp inhale and looked over at Mac who was leaning over his counsel, wide eyed.  
“Lieutenant, what are you doing.” Hux questioning, marching over to Mac.

You slid off your chair and stood beside the girl, as you watched Stormtroopers scrambling all over. If this was part of the demonstration, this squadron wouldn’t make it more than five minutes in the battlefield. 

You searched for the cause of this commotion, your eyes settling on a dark shadow, illuminated by a red light.

 

In the arena was no other man, than the man himself.

 

Kylo Ren was in there, effortlessly murdering troopers with ease. He seemed oblivious to the fact that their guns were fake and the beams sent out of them were no more than projected light.

“What is he doing.” Phasma asked, looking down at the man in black, slaying her innocent troopers. His employees.

You stopped typing and watched.

Hux looked down and pointed, “Does he come here often?”

“N-no sir. This is the first time he has ever been here, let alone in the arena when the Stormtroopers are training.” One of the girls stuttered, staring out, watching the scene unfold in front of her.

You watched as Troopers ran, and hiding from Kylo ren’s angry red wrath.

“Turn on the lights,” Hux said, almost to himself. “I said turn on the lights!” he repeated himself louder as Mac flipped a switch and the once dimly lit arena was filled with light.

Kylo Ren paused, and looked up to where you and the others were stationed. The glass was tinted so he was unable to see through, but you had a feeling he could. You knew he was staring at Hux, but being in his field of gaze was both exciting and terrifying,

Kylo Ren held his gaze.

So this was what the girl meant about being in the presence of Kylo Ren. But unlike her connection with the commander, your connection with him was murder. While part of you was terrified, the other part of you was intrigued. You were fascinated by the idea of death, and had thrown it around in your head before. You didn’t necessarily want to die, but you wouldn’t back away from the idea of dying either.

General Hux grabbed a stray head set on the console next to Mac and yelled into it. That brought you back into the real world.

“What the ever loving hell are you doing down there?” He spat out.

You watched as Kylo Ren switched off his lightsaber, not breaking eye contact. From what you could tell, it appeared he was clenching and unclenching his fist that was not holding on the saber. You watched as he walked out in a cloud of black, his cloak and cowl swinging and swaying behind him as he left the arena.

Phasma stood there, not moving. You would’ve guessed she was in a daze, but you couldn’t tell because of her helmet.

“They weren’t adequate anyway,” she said walking out.

Hux looked at you, and then Mac.

“You will clean up that mess immediately. I wish to see that Commander Ren's mistakes disposed of in a timely and orderly manner. No one is to hear about this” He said following Phasma in suit.

“Wait, did he mean us,” one of the other men said, standing up from his station.  
“I thought it was Hux’s job to pick up after Kylo,” another girl trailed off from where she sat, slumped in her chair.

“Well, apparently it’s our job to clean up after him,” Mac said standing off and taking off his headset.

“Wait, do you want me to come too or,” you trailed off, looking around for an answer. Last time you didn’t wake up this morning and say “Wow, I hope I get to witness Commander Ren slaughter of these innocent men and women!!! I hope I get to clean up after him and deal with dead bodies!!!”

“Yeah, you are an alliance to this crime,” one girl said, walking past you as you.

Mac motioned for everyone to follow, walking through the doors, exhaling loudly.

The training arena was a large room, equipped with large walls and obstacles to hide behind. But, apparently they did hide these Stormtroopers well enough. Their bodies were scattered about, some still moving.

You looked down at the bodies, carefully not stepping on any of them. You took a deep breath. They were alive an hour ago. They had lives. Maybe they had families. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe one or two of them deserved it. You were disgusted and interested. You were enthralled and terrified.

                                                      x x x

Someone there had ties to the janitorial staff and came back with everything needed to hide a murder. Many murders. A multitude of murders. You wanted this all to be a bad dream. You wanted to wake up on your desk, hair messed up and probably drool on some of your reports.

“Alright gang, just put them on this cot and i guess we’ll dump them down the garbage chute,” Mac trailed off. Groans were shared all around, but a lively banter was happening all around you.

“What if they’re still alive,” one of them asked.

“They won’t be for much longer,” Mac said.

You stood to the side with a mop, silently cleaning up any blood on the floor.

“Ok, but he’s kick-ass with that saber! Man, if I had one I couldn’t even start to tell you the things I’d do with it!” One man said.

“No way dude, i couldn’t believe we actually got to see him in action!” another remarked.

“Even though he can act juvenile, he’s pretty hard core with that thing. I wonder how many he has killed with it.”

This went on for a few more minutes until you snapped.

“Do you guys not understand that he literally just slaughtered people,” You said, looking around for a reaction. You felt tears welling up in your eyes.

“Relax, girl. They’re troopers! They’re expendable… A credit a dozen” one girl said, rolling her eyes.

“But that could’ve been one of us,” You almost screamed.

“First off, (Y/N), stop yelling and chill out. we’re smarter and not as expandable. We’re not aiming at targets we can’t see with buckets on our heads,” Mac said, devoid of all emotion. 

“I am chill,” you said, brows furrowing as you looked away.

“You’re not… but that’s part of your charm,” he offered as a reply, “Now I need some help lifting this one onto the cot.”

“I wish the medical team could deal with this,” you said, slowly walking toward him after you set your mop aside. You leaned down, looking at the body. You gagged at the thought of picking it up, and stood up, ignoring the tears welling in your eyes.

You helped him lift the body onto the cot, hot embers stood out against the white material you had picked out weeks ago. Maybe if you had picked stronger material they wouldn’t be dead. Maybe if you were better at your job this wouldn’t have happened. This was all your fault. Maybe you deserved to be sliced in half by Kylo Ren.

The armor belonging to the Stormtrooper was still warm.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free 2 say hi!! comments and kudos r gr8tly appreciated !!  
> tell me how ya like it or something along those lines... it'll make my day c: !!  
> !!! tysm for reading !!!


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